The present invention relates to cooperative communication methods, particularly but not exclusively between a group of users and a base station. The present invention also relates to devices configured to perform the methods.
In a typical wireless communication network, there is a plurality of mobile communication devices configured to communicate with a common destination, such as a base station. If the mobile communication devices have a single antenna, an option for multiple access is to make use of time division multiple access (TDMA) where each mobile communication device transmits data on a different time slot to the base station. A disadvantage of such a scheme is that the received signal at the destination might be deeply faded and no diversity is available to reliably recover the transmitted signals.
There have been proposed schemes to achieve diversity but such schemes assume flat fading channel which is in reality not the case.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a cooperative communication method and device which address at least one of the problems of the prior art and/or to provide the public with a useful choice.